Brain-Computer Interfaces - EEG, fMRI and more

1) "Brain-Computer Interface Eavesdrops on a Daydream." A story for IEEE Spectrum on Oct. 27, 2010. New research, which will be reported tomorrow in the journal Nature, points to the ability to snoop on people’s visual imagination—although it’s still a long way away from the full-fledged dream-reading technologies popularized in this summer’s blockbuster movie Inception.

2) A piece for WNYC/Public Radio International's "Studio 360" aired on Dec. 21, 2012 about new frontiers in design with EEG technologies: EEG — electroencephalography — is almost a century old, and it’s creeping out of the research lab and the neurologist’s office. Headsets embedded with electrodes to read electrical activity in the brain are commercially available, and designers are using that information for all sorts of purposes. On the one hand, experimental wheelchairs can now be guided by brainwaves; videogame companies, inevitably, are exploring game control without a joystick.

At the end of last year, IBM predicted that by 2017 limited forms of mind reading would “no longer [be] science fiction.” Along similar lines, though, in 1933 Nikola Tesla said he would soon be able to photograph people’s thoughts.

Is IBM going to be equally wrong?

Maybe not. Surveying leading neurotech experts has turned up some support—albeit limited and carefully qualified—for the company’s prediction. And oddly enough, one reason is that Tesla’s prediction is—in very limited ways as well—coming true too.

5) "Red, Blue, Green and Other Sounds," story for Wired.com on April 15, 2002 about attempts to enable blind subjects to "see" using sonic representations of their surroundings. Presented at the Toward a Science of Consciousness conference in Tucson, Arizona.

Brain-Computer Interfaces - EEG, fMRI and more

1) "Brain-Computer Interface Eavesdrops on a Daydream." A story for IEEE Spectrum on Oct. 27, 2010. New research, which will be reported tomorrow in the journal Nature, points to the ability to snoop on people’s visual imagination—although it’s still a long way away from the full-fledged dream-reading technologies popularized in this summer’s blockbuster movie Inception.

2) A piece for WNYC/Public Radio International's "Studio 360" aired on Dec. 21, 2012 about new frontiers in design with EEG technologies: EEG — electroencephalography — is almost a century old, and it’s creeping out of the research lab and the neurologist’s office. Headsets embedded with electrodes to read electrical activity in the brain are commercially available, and designers are using that information for all sorts of purposes. On the one hand, experimental wheelchairs can now be guided by brainwaves; videogame companies, inevitably, are exploring game control without a joystick.

At the end of last year, IBM predicted that by 2017 limited forms of mind reading would “no longer [be] science fiction.” Along similar lines, though, in 1933 Nikola Tesla said he would soon be able to photograph people’s thoughts.

Is IBM going to be equally wrong?

Maybe not. Surveying leading neurotech experts has turned up some support—albeit limited and carefully qualified—for the company’s prediction. And oddly enough, one reason is that Tesla’s prediction is—in very limited ways as well—coming true too.

5) "Red, Blue, Green and Other Sounds," story for Wired.com on April 15, 2002 about attempts to enable blind subjects to "see" using sonic representations of their surroundings. Presented at the Toward a Science of Consciousness conference in Tucson, Arizona.